President's Speech at
National Urban League Conference
Discusses Shirley Sherrod, race, education, jobs, family and More !
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Crack-Powder Sentencing Disparity
Reduced by Congress
Ryan Grimm/HuffPo
Congress addressed a historic wrong on Wednesday afternoon, replacing it instead with a slightly lesser wrong, when the House voted to reduce the disparity in the sentencing of people caught with crack cocaine versus powder cocaine.
To be charged with a felony, crack users needed to possess only 5 grams of the drug. To be hit with the same charge, powder cocaine users needed to be caught with 500 grams. This 100-to-1 disparity has frequently been cited by drug war opponents as exhibit A to buttress their claim that drug laws are racist.
Pending President Obama's signature, the new law will reduce that disparity to 18-to-1. The threshold for crack cocaine in the new law will be 28 grams; the powder level remains the same.
The moment on the House floor came and went fairly quickly, but the ease with which the bill passed belied a lot of behind-the-scenes activity.
As of Friday, the bill was not on the calendar to be considered this week. But on Saturday at the Netroots Nation conference, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) was asked about the disparity and said that she expected the bill to come up the next week. It was placed on the calendar on Tuesday.
Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) controls the floor schedule and has been pushing on the issue for several weeks, working "hand in glove," according to one Senate aide, with Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), who sponsored the upper chamber's version of the disparity fix. The Senate aide said that Hoyer was late to a bicameral leadership meeting Tuesday night because he was still making calls to nail down support for the legislation.
A key question was whether Republicans would demand a roll call or allow it to pass by a voice vote. Few vulnerable politicians, in an election year, want to vote on anything that could be cast as being soft on crack cocaine. Hoyer worked directly with House Republicans to assuage some of their concerns in an effort to ward off a demand for a recorded vote, which could jeopardize the legislation. (Read rest of article)
B4B NOTE: Although still imperfect...for those who say that The President hasn't done anything for Black people...good to see a law which specifically targeted the Black community for 20 years finally being addressed in a more equitable direction. Bet the penal system is sad about this one.
He had reportedly tried the night before to reach Ms. Sherrod but was unsuccessful. The President did reached Ms. Sherrod by telephone today at about 12:35. They had a very pleasant conversation which reportedly lasted 7 minutes.
The President expressed to Ms. Sherrod his regret about the events of the last several days. In their discussion, he emphasized that Secretary Vilsack was sincere in his apology yesterday,(after hastily firing Ms. Sherrod) and in his work to rid USDA of discrimination.
The President told Ms. Sherrod that this misfortune can present an opportunity for her to continue her hard work on behalf of those in need, and he hopes that she will do so.
Tea Party Federation Expels Mark Williams Over 'Offensive' Response to NAACP's Racism Charge
The National Tea Party Federation has expelled conservative commentator and Tea Party Express spokesman Mark Williams over a fictional letter Williams wrote on his blog last week from "Colored People" to Abraham Lincoln.
"We, in the last 24 hours, have expelled Tea Party Express and Mark Williams from the National Tea Party Federation because of the letter that he wrote," federation spokesman David Webb said Sunday on CBS's "Face The Nation."
Williams wrote the blog post, which has since been taken down, in response to a resolution adopted by the NAACP accusing Tea Party leaders of tolerating racism within the movement.
"Dear Mr. Lincoln," began Williams' letter. "We Coloreds have taken a vote and decided that we don't cotton to that whole emancipation thing. Freedom means having to work for real, think for ourselves, and take consequences along with the rewards. That is just far too much to ask of us Colored People and we demand that it stop!"
Webb called the blog post "clearly offensive."
Related:
NAACP Receives Racist Death Threat
What A Group !
Unloads a Frenzy of Race-Baiting
The summer months are typically when the quality of political discourse in this country reaches its yearly nadir. Washington tends to slow down from June to August, and people who hold moderate interest in the political process instead turn to barbecues and baseball games. As a consequence, the people who remain engaged are those who are more, let's say, passionate in their beliefs, and aren't going to let a little thing like "other things to do" get in the way of their political activism. Summer is also tough for political journalists who still have deadlines to meet, but much less material with which to work. As a consequence, we see stories that would ordinarily merit passing or no mention earn disproportionate coverage. Minor gaffes become "scandals," non-issues become "controversial," and the end result is that pretty much everyone gets angrier.
It's in this environment that the right-wing media thrive, practiced as they are in ginning up stories based on manufactured outrage and utter nonsense. And lately, they've all had one topic on their minds: race. Specifically the racism of black political figures, which they claim is nothing short of institutional policy in the Obama administration, and the racism of white tea partiers, which they claim doesn't exist.
And where else can one begin except with the ever-evolving, increasingly ridiculous New Black Panther Party "scandal," which revolves around the allegation -- and it's hard to believe that right-wingers actually profess to believe this -- that the Obama Justice Department dropped voter intimidation charges against members of this fringe hate group due to the administration's official policy of not pursuing cases in which the defendant is black and the victim is white. Is there evidence for any of this? No. Does the partisan GOP hack/former DOJ attorney making this allegation have any facts to support it? Not so much. But that's the story they're sticking to, and it has sparked a frenzy of race-baiting more explicit than any we've seen thus far during the Obama administration.
Fox News has, of course, been leading the charge, embarking on what Jonathan Chait calls "the most widespread and mainstream right-wing effort to exploit racial fears against Obama." Glenn Beck nonsensically claimed that the New Black Panthers "have ties to the White House" and flat-out accused the administration of tacitly endorsing the "race war" he sees coming down the pike. Perpetually outraged Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly, the "straight news" driving force behind the bogus story, has been corrected on the facts more times than should be necessary, but continues to hype the story with wide-eyed indignation.
In some ways, that's to be expected from Fox News. The danger is that, with not much else going on and the right-wing rage machine operating at high speed, the bogus story starts bleeding into the mainstream press. Kelly herself boasted that Fox News "dragged the media kicking and screaming" to the New Black Panther story, and already there have been overly credulous treatments of the non-scandal on CNN and in the pages of The Washington Post.
The obverse to the right-wing media's fact-free claims of racism at the Justice Department are their assurances, contrary to the facts, that there exists no racism in the tea party movement. After the NAACP signaled its intention to pass a resolution condemning the "racist elements" within the tea party, conservatives went ballistic, claiming that the many, many, many, many, many examples of tea party racism and bigotry simply don't exist. And nothing will convince them otherwise -- not the many photographs of racist placards at tea party rallies (if Sean Hannity couldn't find them, they must not exist!), nor the word of civil rights legend Rep. John Lewis (he's a liar!).
Bigoted, racial attacks from conservatives against Obama aren't anything new. Hell, not even a week after he announced his intention to run for the presidency, they were excitedly spreading false rumors that he spent his childhood in a madrassa. But this past month has been something different. Gone are the code words, the winks and nods, and the dog whistles -- the conservative media are openly and aggressively trying to turn Obama's race into something threatening. You can chalk it up to the heat, the summer doldrums, or whatever. The fact is that they're going down roads from which there is no coming back, and it's only going to get worse as the summer rolls on.
RELATED ARTICLE: Bush ally: Black Panther story a 'fantasy' to 'topple Obama'
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The President BLASTS Republicans in the Senate who are disgustingly blocking unemployment checks for MILLIONS of American families, forcing them to literally STARVE...and also small business tax breaks to create jobs -- even as they push for permanent, massive tax cuts for the richest Americans . What a pathetic group !
Senate Passes Wall Street Reform:
Another Incredible Accomplishment/First
for
President Barack Obama !
A broad financial reform bill, designed to remedy the mistakes that led to the economic meltdown of 2008, officially passed the Senate Thursday by a vote of 60-39.
A 60-38 vote earlier in the day on Thursday allowed the bill to clear the Senate's last procedural hurdle, though support was split sharply along partisan lines.
Only three Republicans -- Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe of Maine and Scott Brown of Massachusetts -- voted with Democrats in the initial vote to end the debate, reported The Associated Press. Democrat Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, who has blasted the bill for not being strong enough, voted against it along with most Republicans.
The bill is now making its way to President Barack Obama, who has publicly demanded sweeping financial reform.
Even before the vote, Democrats acknowledged that the bill in its current state is not a cure-all.
"It is not a perfect bill," Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), chair of the Banking Committee, said. "But we believe we've done the best we could under the circumstances to see to it that we never have another bailout of a major financial institution at taxpayer expense." Read rest of article:
Getting LOTS Done and
Just in His 18th MONTH !!!
(and they'll STILL minimize his accomplishments)
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